tion and appeared in Prague in 1488 though the New Testament had already been printed in 1475.
The Bohemian and Moravian Brethren maintained printing houses in Mladý Boleslav and Litomyšl from which were issued catechisms, bibles, song-books, sermons and other religious works urging the simple Christian faith and spirit of brotherly love as a sure means of securing the Kingdom of God on this earth. Throughout there was close observation of the humanistic teachings of Chelčicky whose popularity served to make every one eager to read with the result that the literary language became more stabilized and literary activity was enthusiastically encouraged.
For a century and a half writers of varying degrees of power produced a great quantity of books largely religious, didactic, polemical, philosophic, historical, political, and scientific but there was relatively little of poetry or of purely creative literature in this period.
One name stands pre-eminent in connection with the disastrous crisis of the Battle of White Mountain. John Amos Komenský (Comenius) 1592–1670—last bishop of the Bohemian and Moravian Brethren and first apostle of scientific education—the father of modern educational methods—belongs among the shining lights of all nations and not alone to the land that gave him birth. Being the last bishop of the Bohemian and Moravian Brethren, he fell a victim to the orgies of hatred practised by the conquerors of the Bohemian Revolt when on November 8, 1620, the adherents of
